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VERSION:2.0
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SUMMARY:IC Colloquium: Communication Amid Uncertainty
DTSTART:20191031T161500
DTEND:20191031T173000
DTSTAMP:20260407T134456Z
UID:c657a4269256645642c45d84915b814c03b91cdb9428e8f9951dd45a
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:By: Madhu Sudan - Harvard University\nVideo of his talk\n\nAbs
 tract:\nOne of the basic goals of the theory of computing is to model beha
 viour of "intelligent" systems (computers or humans). Behaviour includes a
 bility to acquire information (or knowledge)\, analyzing it (or reasoning)
  and communicating it. The theories of Turing (universal computation) and 
 Shannon (reliable communication) offer the foundations for this study cove
 ring much of the terrain.  And the remarkable progress in the technologie
 s of computing and communication is a testament to the success of these th
 eories. Unfortunately this success has also exposed problems in the inters
 ection of the two fields that neither captures adequately. In our work on 
 "communication amid uncertainty" we explore some such problems\, where the
  ability of two communicating entities to compute allows them to acquire l
 arge *mostly* common context. The commonality of the context should enable
  communication to be even more efficient. On the other hand the "uncertain
 ty" about the context (the fact the context is only mostly common) leads t
 o novel mathematical questions that challenge the fundamental aspects of t
 he classical theories. In this talk we will briefly describe some of the q
 uestions and our (partial) answers in this setting of communication with u
 ncertainty.\n\nBio:\nMadhu Sudan is a Gordon McKay Professor in the John A
 . Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University
 \, where he has been since 2015. Madhu Sudan got his Bachelors degree from
  IIT Delhi in 1987 and his Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley in 1992. Between 1992 
 and 2015\, Madhu Sudan worked at IBM Research (Research Staff Member 1992-
 1997)\, at MIT (Associate Professor 1997-2000\, Professor 2000-2011\, Fuji
 tsu Chair Professor 2003-2011\, CSAIL Associate Director 2007-2009\, Adjun
 ct Professor 2011-2015)\, and at Microsoft Research (Principal Researcher\
 , 2009-2015). Madhu Sudan is a recipient of the Nevanlinna Prize awarded b
 y the International Mathematical Union for outstanding contributions to ma
 thematics of computer and information science\, and the Infosys Foundation
  Prize in Mathematical Sciences. Madhu Sudan is a fellow of the Associatio
 n for Computing Machinery\,  the Institute of Electrical and Electronics 
 Engineers and the American Mathematical Society.  He is a member of the A
 merican Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
 \n\nMadhu Sudan's research interests revolve around mathematical studies o
 f communication and computation. Specifically his research focusses on con
 cepts of reliability and mechanisms that are\, or can be\, used by compute
 rs to interact reliably with each other. His research draws on tools from 
 computational complexity\, which studies efficiency of computation\, and m
 any areas of mathematics including algebra and probability theory.  He is
  best known for his works on probabilistic checking of proofs\, and on the
  design of list-decoding algorithms for error-correcting codes.  His curr
 ent research interests include property testing which is the study of subl
 inear time algorithms to estimate properties of massive data\, and communi
 cation amid uncertainty\, a mathematical study of the role of context in c
 ommunication.  \n\nMore information
LOCATION:BC 420 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==BC%20420
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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